Appeals court rejects challenge to Chicago landmarks ordinance

Preservationists exhaled Thursday after an Illinois appeals court turned back a challenge to Chicago's landmarks ordinance that had significance for efforts to save historic buildings nationwide.

The ruling sided with a lower court in rejecting an argument that the city's ordinance, which is similar to those used in other big cities around the country, is unconstitutionally vague and ambiguous.

"We couldn't be happier. We are ecstatic," said Bonnie McDonald, president of the Chicago-based preservation advocacy group Landmarks Illinois.

The ruling, however, also allowed the plaintiffs to declare partial victory because it said they could go forward with their claim that the ordinance was unfairly applied in the cases involving their property. That portion of the lawsuit was sent back to Cook County Circuit Court.

Property owners Albert Hanna and Carol Mrowka argued that the city had no legitimate reason to designate their communities, Arlington-Deming in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and East Village near Wicker Park, as historic districts. The lawsuit pointed to other neighborhoods, among them Little Village and Pilsen, that are similar but have not been landmarked.

"The area really is not landmark-worthy at all," said attorney Thomas Ramsdell, representing Hanna and Mrowka.

What was more important for preservationists is that Thursday's ruling affirmed that the city's standards for granting buildings and districts landmark status are sufficiently defined. Preservationists feared that an adverse ruling on that aspect of the lawsuit had the potential to undermine the city's entire preservation program.

Roderick Drew, a spokesman for the city's Law Department, said in a statement that "we are pleased that the court agreed that the Landmarks Ordinance is constitutional." He declined to comment on the portion of the lawsuit that the appeals court sent back for further hearing.

The city's landmarks law, passed in 1968, protects more than 300 individual landmarks and more than 50 historic districts. The ordinance's criteria for landmark designation include consideration of a building or district's architectural, cultural, economic or historic significance.

Ramsdell said he expects to appeal the ruling on the ordinance's language. The appeals court appeared to be in line with his argument when it considered the lawsuit for the first time in 2009, writing in a ruling that sent the lawsuit back to circuit court "that the terms 'value,' 'important,' 'significant,' and 'unique' are vague, ambiguous, and overly broad."

But the latest ruling stated that those earlier remarks did not amount to "strict holdings or instructions to the trial court" and were subject to "overbroad mischaracterization" by the plaintiffs.

The court said it found the terms and phrases in the ordinance that were being challenged "sufficiently detailed under the circumstances to guide the (city landmarks) Commission in its duties and responsibilities."

The language in Chicago's ordinance is similar to that employed in hundreds of historic preservation ordinances across the country, said Jerold Kayden, who serves as principal constitutional counsel to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and for that reason the case was being closely watched around the country.